Multi-agent support for distributed engineering design

Abstract

Characterised by geographical, temporal, functional and/or semantic distribution, today's enterprise models engage multiple design teams with heterogeneous skills cooperating together in order to achieve global optima in design. The success of this distributed design organization depends on critical factors such as the efficient management of the design related information circulated in the distributed environment and the support for the necessary cooperation process among participants dispersed across the enterprise. This paper proposes a multi-agent design information management system to support the synthesis and presentation of information to distributed teams for the purposes of enhancing design, learning, creativity, communication and productivity. Autonomous software agents and information ontologies enable the proposed system facilitating interoperation among distributed resources as well as knowledge sharing, reuse and integration. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.